The number of killings in the city fell 45 percent compared
with 2012 and marked the lowest total since 1971's 15 homicides.

"We've seen a significant drop. It's been a good year,''
said Portland police Cmdr. George Burke, head of Portland's Detective Division.

Burke, who used to be paged to nearly every murder scene as
a homicide sergeant from 2003 to 2007, said he doesn't remember a time when
Portland had fewer than 20 homicides.

Across the metro area, Clackamas and Washington counties
also experienced a downturn in homicides, mirroring national trends in major
cities, including New York, Los Angeles and Philadelphia.

Metro homicides

Portland:

-- 16 in 2013, down from 29 in 2012. Twelve people died from gunshot wounds. One was stabbed to death, one was strangled, one died from blunt force trauma and another from carbon monoxide poisoning.

-- Two were officer-involved shootings. Five resulted from alleged domestic violence. Two occurred outside a bar or strip club after closing. At least three involved gang members or associates and at least two were believed to be drug-related.

-- The victims ranged in age from 15 to 61. Most were men; three were women.

-- Five of the cases are unsolved.

East Multnomah County:

-- Seven in 2013, six in Gresham and one in Fairview.

-- In four of the homicides, police described either the suspect or the victim as a gang member. Authorities described one killing as an act of domestic violence, and at least one was considered drug-related.

-- One was a reserve police officer responding to reports of a house fire and armed man at large. Two were stabbings and the fourth case, an infant who died from an undetermined cause, remains unsolved.

Criminal justice experts cite a myriad of factors that may
be contributing to the decline: the
graying of the nation, improvements in medical care and more targeted policing
of neighborhoods considered "hot spots'' for violence.

Jack Levin, co-director of the Brudnick Center on Violence
at Northeastern University, said so many variables are at play when examining
homicides that it's "almost impossible to give a definitive explanation for the
dramatic decline."

But he said the aging population definitely makes a
difference. "There's a larger number of older people, the baby boomers are in
their late 50s and 60s, and they simply don't commit the large number of
violent street crimes that young people do,'' Levin said.

In Portland, more people have been shot this year in
gang-related violence, yet there have been fewer deaths, leaving investigators
scratching their heads.

"We've talked about this, and we can't put a finger on it,''
said Portland Gang Enforcement Sgt. Don Livingston.

He noted that some of the gang violence has migrated east
into Gresham, which experienced a greater number of gang-involved homicides in
2013. In five of Gresham's six homicides, either the victim or suspects had
gang ties, police said.

Multnomah County gang prosecutor Kirsten Snowden said gang
members are still spraying bullets, but luckily often miss their targets.

Livingston also credited life-saving medical care. He's seen
victims loaded into ambulances with significant injuries – six close-up
gunshots to the torso or head wounds – and he's startled to learn they lived.

"It seems to me in years' past, they likely would have been
a homicide. But then a check with the hospital, and we learn they're critical
but stable,'' he said.

The physicians who oversee trauma care at Portland's two
trauma-level hospitals said what they're doing isn't much different from a year
ago, but emergency medicine has dramatically improved in the last decade,
mostly tied to military practices.

"Much of that has come from what we learned from wars in
Afghanistan and Iraq,'' said Martin Schreiber, chief of trauma at Oregon Health
& Science University Hospital and an Army Reserve doctor who has his third
deployment to Afghanistan in March.

Paramedics used to be taught, for example, not to use
tourniquets in the field for fear they'd cause further injuries. But for the
last 10 to 15 years, they've been trained to do the opposite to stem bleeding
immediately – thanks to the military approach to treating wounded soldiers.

"We now know it saves lives,'' Schreiber said.

Trauma surgeons also now use special dressings with active
chemical ingredients to help stop bleeding – one type known as combat gauze, he
said. They don't try to fix all the problems they find during an initial
surgery and instead do what they call
"damage control,'' saving other procedures for follow-up surgeries. It's
another method learned from military doctors, he said.

"We want to get in, stop the bleeding and do the minimum
necessary to stabilize the patient and get out to let the person recover,''
Schreiber said.

Bill Long, Legacy Emanuel Medical Center's trauma medical
director, said when he arrived at the hospital 31 years ago, 30 percent of
trauma patients came in with either gunshot or stab wounds, mostly from drug
feuds or domestic violence. Today, 8 percent of both Legacy Emanuel's and OHSU
Hospital's trauma patients arrive with gunshot or stab wounds.

"It would be nice to lower it down to zero'' Long said, "but
unfortunately, we can't change human nature.''

Portland police have assigned enhanced patrols to neighborhoods
or intersections that historically have been known for heavy gang or
drug-related violence. For example, Portland's North Precinct dedicated
street-level officers to work with businesses, neighborhood groups and schools
in the Albina-Killingsworth area over the past year and now have moved those
officers to the Cully neighborhood.

Domestic violence accounted for about a third of the metro
area's homicides, including Portland's.

In east Multnomah County, police said an estranged husband
in Gresham shot his 27-year-old wife in the head and abducted their 2-year-old
daughter. In Washington County, police said a 71-year-old woman was killed with
a sledgehammer by her great-grandson and his cousin.

Of Portland's 16 killings, five resulted from alleged
domestic disputes -- including two
husbands accused of killing their wives, an older brother accused of shooting his
younger brother on Christmas Eve and two others resulting from jealousies or
love triangles.

One Portland man, police said, tried to kill himself after
fatally shooting his wife and has argued in court that he was assisting in her
suicide. Another husband is accused of
strangling his wife hours after she called an attorney to initiate a divorce
and less than a month after police had investigated an earlier threat by him
against his wife.

"That's so typical. It's almost like you can see this
coming. The end of an abusive relationship is a really dangerous time. It's
really volatile,'' said Annie Neal, domestic violence coordinator for Multnomah
County.

Domestic violence victims must take threats seriously, plan
for their safety and prepare for all possibilities, Neal said.

Alcohol played a factor in at least two other Portland
killings, which occurred outside a bar immediately after last call.

Multnomah County prosecutor William Prince told a judge last
month that the fatal shooting of a 33-year-old man during a melee outside a
Northeast Portland strip club "started like a lot of really bad nights start,''
pointing out that most people involved in the disturbance outside Club Skinn
were drunk.

***

The decline in deaths is little consolation for grieving
family members.

Royal Harris, 44, was home when the phone rang late Nov.
9. A friend told him his brother,
Durieul Harris II, 30, had been shot outside Fontaine Bleau, a Northeast
Portland nightclub.

View full sizePolice officers block off the area around the Fontaine Bleau nightclub in November as they investigate a fatal shooting that took place outside the club. Helen Jung/The Oregonian

"It's not the first time I got the call,'' he said. Several
of his cousins have died in homicides in the past; a brother is serving a
lengthy sentence in prison.

"What this all boils down to is two individuals without the
skills or resources to resolve a conflict,'' said Harris, who has worked in
gang outreach for years and now works as a case manager for Constructing Hope,
an apprenticeship program to help adults who have been in the criminal justice
system.

"The reality is nobody is immune. You don't understand the
impact unless it happens to you,'' he said.
"Each person killed – those are lives, those aren't just filler for the
story at the end of the year.''

Harris knows there had been a fight inside the Fontaine
Bleau nightclub between two men, possibly over money, before his brother was
shot outside. Whether his brother tried to get in the middle of the fight or
was initially involved, he doesn't know.
No arrest has been made.

"It could have been over a penny or a million dollars.
Either way, it's not worth a life,'' Harris said. "Whatever the reason, there's
no rewind, no reset.''

"It's a blessing more people aren't dying,'' he said. "But
the fact that we lose anybody over senseless violence is a tragedy.''